“A liberal’s idea of courage is eating at a restaurant that hasn’t been reviewed yet.”–Mort Sahl.

We begin our discussion of weaponized feminism with its ultimate manifestation–a joint call by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Harvey Weinstein accuser Angelina Jolie for NATO to commit its resources to defending women’s rights.

Note that they cite Kosovo as a salient example of their feminist “call to arms.” As discussed in FTR #161 , among other programs, fighters in the Kosovo Liberation Army were largely descendants of World War II fascist fighting formations, including the 21st Waffen SS Division–the Skanderbeg Division.

The irony in Stoltenberg and Jolie’s call for NATO to enforce women’s rights in Kosovo, among other places could not be more profound: ” . . . . Kosovo’s Prime Minister Hashim Thaci is facing a wide range of criminal allegations, including owning a harem with 52 female sex slaves . . . . According to the news agency, a Ukrainian woman escaped from Thaci’s harem and revealed damning information about sex slavery in Kosovo. The woman claims 52 female sex slaves are forced to work night and day to service the Prime Minister and his rich friends in business and government. . . .”

Next, we turn to what may well be another example of NATO weaponized feminism. Among the victims of the #MeToo movement was Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), a prominent congressional critic of the Nazi Azov Battalion, receiving arms and training from the U.S.

In 2018, NATO forces are scheduled to engage in maneuvers in Ukraine.

It is not surprising that Kristofer Harrison (the author of an apologia for the Nazi Azov Battalion in Ukraine) is a former Defense Department and State Department advisor to George W. Bush (and from the same political milieu of Kurt Volker, the Trump administration’s CIA-trained representative to Ukraine.) Noteworthy in his propaganda piece dismissing Representative John Conyers (D-MI) as “the Kremlin’s Man in Congress” and discounting anyone else discussing the ascension of the OUN/B fascists in Ukraine in a similar vein, is the identity of his source for assurances that Azov is not a Nazi unit.

With Al Franken’s departure from the Senate–an event that figures to make the Democrats’ chances of regaining control of the chamber more precarious–we reflect on aspects of Franken’s departure, including the right-wing affiliations of Leann Tweeden, the apparent foreknowledge of the event by long-time GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone, the extreme difficulty of a public figure successfully suing for defamation under American civil law, the utility of “sexpionage” from the standpoint of intelligence and counterintelligence and the proclivity of the so-called “progressive sector” for one-dimensional identity politics.

We note that the now-famous photograph of Franken “groping” Leann Tweeden’s breasts was obviously a staged event, not to be taken seriously. (The taste here is questionable, although as can be seen from two other photos of the same USO tour, the dominant aesthetic of this tour was bawdy, tongue-in-cheek. Note the photos of Tweeden goosing a male C &W performer and Franken and Tweeden mugging over a skimpy undergarment. It is clear that neither is to be taken seriously.)

We conclude the program with examination of technocratic fascism in action–the Twitter bot role in the takedown of Franken.

On November 15th, a Japanese developer named Atsufumi Otsuka registering a web domain in Japan called RealUSA.site, on the same day Roger Stone announced over Twitter that it’s Franken’s “time in the barrel”–one day before the story broke.

Then, on November 20th, Alt-Right provocateur Charles Johnson tweeted, “Thinking of offering money to people who go on tv and say Al Frank is a predator.” That same day, Otsuka registered a second domain in Japan for another fake-news site, VotyUS.me.

The two fake news sites were finally put to use on December 7, shortly before Democrats started calling for Franken to step down. The sites re-published an article by Ijeoma Oluo, a liberal writer, urging women and activists to stop supporting Franken. Oluo’s piece, titled “Dear Al Franken, I’ll Miss You but You Can’t Matter Anymore,” was posted on relatively obscure website that only had a reach of of 10,000 followers. But once the article got reposted to those two fake news sites the twitter bot networking suddenly sprang into action, with thousands of fake Twitter accounts tweeting the title of the article—but linking back to repost of the article on the fake news sites, RealUSA.site or VotyUS.me.

Although it’s not clear who paid for the Twitter-bot activity, it’s hard to ignore the coincidental timing. Researchers have concluded that it wasn’t cheap. They estimate that it required dozens of hours of initial development time and at least one person working full time to produce and distribute content. The whole task of setting up this Japanese Twitter bot army to amplify the calls for Senator Franken to step down was deemed by whoever paid for it to be worth the time and money.

“ . . . . A pair of Japan-based websites, created the day before Tweeden came forward, and a swarm of related Twitter bots made the Tweeden story go viral and then weaponized a liberal writer’s criticism of Franken. The bot army—in tandem with prominent real, live members of the far right who have Twitter followers in the millions, such as Mike Cernovich—spewed thousands of posts, helping the #FrankenFondles hashtag and the “Franken is a groper” meme effectively silence the testimonies of eight former female staffers who defended the Minnesota Democrat before he resigned last year. . . .

. . . . One question remains: Who is paying for this operation? The researchers believe that the operation was expensive. ‘We estimate dozens of hours of initial development time and at least one person working full time to produce and distribute content,’ one of the researchers told Newsweek. ‘Additionally, it’s likely that an existing bot farm of compromised computers is basically being rented as a distributed host for these accounts.’ . . . .”

Program Highlights Include:

1. Discussion of Gandhi’s belief that one should not mix sex and politics.
2. Discussion of the amoral aspect of gender or sexual preference typing of individuals.
3. Franken’s second accuser, Lindsay Menz, is a Trump backer who supposedly was groped by Franken seven years before, in the presence of her father and fellow Trump backer/husband Jeremy Menz. ” . . . . the incident took place at the 2010 Minnesota State Fair. . . . Menz said she was at the fair with her father . . . . As they prepared for the photos, Franken ‘pulled (her) in really close, like awkward close’ as her husband was taking the picture. . . . Menz said that her and [husband] Jeremy voted for Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election . . . .”

Highlighting recent, alarming aspects of the Ukraine crisis, the broadcast underscores how past and present may signal the beginning of World War III in a manner not unlike how fractious events in the Balkans triggered the First World War.

With Ukraine now receiving U.S. arms, including modified stinger anti-aircraft missiles, the Nazi “punisher” battalions in that country’s East may be in a position to trigger one or more provocations that could lead to conflict between nuclear-armed Russia, NATO and the U.S.

Since the Donbass militias have no air force, the stingers would appear to be deployed in the event of a wider, Ukraine/Russia war.

Nazi elements active in the Maidan coup spawned the Azov and other “punisher” units. With more information surfacing that indicates that the Maidan sniper shootings were a provocation-derived event, the possibility that Svoboda and Pravy Sektor-linked elements could drive developments in the Donbass toward World War III is one that deserves more attention than it will receive.

A frightening development, virtually unreported in the U.S., concerns unilateral moves by the Poroshenko government to move away from the Minsk peace plan and to rebrand the conflict in Eastern Ukraine as “occupation” by an “aggressor” Russia.

This appears to pave the way for a wider, deeper conflict which could, ultimately, draw in the U.S. and NATO: ” . . . . According to [Dmitri] Kiselyov, the new law, which awaits Poroshenko’s signature, makes preparations for war and includes language indicating a bellicose new approach to the conflict. The mission in Donbass is no longer described as an ‘anti-terrorist operation.’ Rather, the mission now is to send armed forces against ‘military formations of the Russian Federation’ in Donbass.

Military headquarters are established to coordinate the operation to be waged in Donbass. While up until now the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Lugansk were considered under the Minsk Accords as negotiating parties, now there are only ‘occupation administrations’ of the Russian Federation on these territories, with Russia identified as an ‘aggressor.’ . . . .”

The danger of Poroshenko seeking to play the “war card” to distract from Urkaine’s dire economic circumstances and his own failed government are real. Conflict with Russia could also deflect from Trump’s and the GOP’s failures at home: ” . . . . On the economic front, the European Union has refused to extend 600 million euros of credit to Ukraine due to corruption. The International Monetary Fund recently refused a tranche of $800 million over failure to introduce reforms. Meanwhile, in 2019 Ukraine is due to start repaying earlier loans. This will come to $14 billion a year, which amounts to half the state budget of Ukraine.

Due to dire economic conditions, Poroshenko and other government officials in Kiev have become deeply unpopular, and with diminished chances for electoral success may see war as politically advantageous. . . .”

The Trump administration just approved the sale of sniper rifles and, more significantly, anti-tank Javelin missiles to Ukraine. This should be evaluated against the background of the recent moves by Kiev (increasing the danger for an escalated conflict) as well as the activities of Kurt Volker, the “ex”-CIA officer, NATO functionary, George W. Bush State Department official and Atlantic Councicl Senior advisor serving as the Trump administration’s point-man in Ukraine.

Might anti-aircraft missiles be next? As the article below notes, the Donbass separatists don’t actually have an air force, so it would be a curious decision to start sending them anti-aircraft weapons. ” . . . . The proposed transfer — which also would include antiaircraft arms that would be defined as defensive weaponry — comes as fighting between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed separatists. . . . The utility of antiaircraft weaponry, for example, is unclear, as the Russian-backed rebel army has no air force. The war is fought along a line of trenches that has not moved much since February 2015. . . .”

According to a report back in June, the Pentagon recently modified shoulder-fired stinger missiles to shoot small down drones that are difficult for regular Stinger missiles to hit. It’s not at all inconceivable that the anti-aircraft weapons the Pentagon and State Department have in mind are those Stinger missiles, modified for the purpose of shooting down separatist drones.

Also keep in mind that the shoulder-launched stringer missiles are among the weapons that terrorists would love to obtain and the Ukrainian troops getting trained on these systems may include the neo-Nazis fighting in Ukraine’s army getting trained by US military advisors like the Azov batallion. ” . . . . The American training at the Yavoriv base in western Ukraine is focused on forging a disciplined, professional military from the mix of volunteer groups that first fought the Russian incursion, rather than placing bets on any high-tech weapons systems. . . .”

When you read that, remember that the “mix of volunteers groups” includes neo-Nazis, including the Azov Battalion.

In other words, if Stinger missiles really are part of the military package, and just not yet announced, those little nightmares could easily end up in neo-Nazi hands and the US military could even be the ones training them on how to use them. We’ll see if that’s how it plays out, but we can’t rule it out.

The arms sales described above are being realized under the supervision of Trump’s new point man for Ukraine, “ex”-CIA, State Department and NATO functionary Kurt Volker. From Volker’s Wikipedia entry: ” . . . . Volker began his career in foreign affairs as an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency in 1986. . . . In July 2005, Volker became the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, serving in that position until he was appointed United States Permanent Representative to NATO in July 2008 by President George W. Bush. . . . and a Senior Advisor at the Atlantic Council since October 2009. . . . .”

We note that the arms sales to Ukraine effected on Volker’s watch come after the removal of John Conyers (D-MI), one of the most vociferous Congressional opponents of arming and training the Azov Battalion and similar Nazi units.

Next, we take stock of how Conyers, “The Kremlin’s Man in Congress,” was removed following a gambit by “Alt-Right” blogger, Trump ally and misogynist Mike Cernovich to finance the solicitation of professionally damaging information about political opponents. “. . . . In November, the Trump-backing social media agitator Mike Cernovich offered to pay $10,000.00 for details of any congressional sexual harassment settlements, and said on Twitter that he would cover the expenses of ‘any VICTIM of a Congressman who wants to come forward to tell her story.’ Shortly before posting that offer, a source provided Mr. Cernovich with a copy of a sexual harassment settlement that led in December to the resignation of Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, until then the longest-serving member of the House. . . .”

In FTR #981, we examined the Ukrainian fascist foundation of much of the “Russia-Gate” psy-op,” following that with detailed examination of the possibility that Paul Manafort may have actually been working as a U.S./Western intelligence asset or agent, deliberately precipitating the Maidan sniper fire that sounded the death knell for the Yanukovich regime.

This program updates the boiling sewer that is Ukraine, utilizing information from German Foreign Policy (which feeds along the lower right-hand page of this website.) We take note of several key points:

1.–Corruption in Ukraine remains rampant and “rule by oligarch” continues unabated under Poroshenko, an oligarch himself and the former finance minister for Yanukovich.
2.–Supporters of Maidan have been highly critical of the continuation of this grotesque status quo.
3.–Among the perpetrators of ongoing, institutionalized corruption in Ukraine has been the son of Arsen Avakov, the interior minister and a patron of the Nazi Azov Battalion. ” . . . . Corruption continues at high levels. For example, the case of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov’s son, who sold backpacks to the army at six times their normal price, allegedly causing damage in the six-digit euros. . . .”
4.–Investigation of Avakov, jr’s activities has been [predictably] interdicted. ” . . . .When the National Anti-Corruption Bureau searched the man’s house, the National Guard, under the responsibility of the interior minister intervened and halted the search – under the pretext of having to vacate the building because of a bomb threat. . . .”
5.–The two article series sets forth greater detail on the sniper shootings at the Maidan, which look more and more to be a provocation. ” . . . . In February 2016, Maidan activist Ivan Bubenchik confessed that in the course of the massacre, he had shot Ukrainian police officers. Bubenchik confirmed this in a film that had attracted international attention.[10] . . . .”
6.–An Italian TV documentary alleges that ethnic Georgian snipers were involved in the Maidan shootings, further indicating that the Maidan sniper shootings were a possible provocation. (The documentary does come from a Berlusconi-controlled outlet, however it dovetails credibly with other available information. UNA-UNSO, the latest iteration of the UPA was very active in the caucasus and Chechens have been working with Pravy Sektor and elements associated with the Azov Battalion. As discussed in FTR #850, former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili became the governor of Odessa province and is very close to Ihor Kolomoisky, another patron of the Azov Battalion.) “In an Italian TV documentary on the February 20, 2014 Maidan massacre, serious accusations were made against several politicians in Ukraine. . . . In the documentary, three Georgians, incriminating themselves for their own participation, report that some of the leaders of the protests, who are today members of Kiev’s parliament, had supplied weapons to the snipers, who, at the time, indiscriminately killed policemen and demonstrators. Officially, this massacre is still being attributed to Ukrainian repressive organs or to unspecified Russians. The Georgians also report that the current speaker of the parliament, Andriy Parubiy, was often seen in the hotel, from where the snipers were firing that day. As ‘Maidan Commander,’Parubiy had been in charge of controlling armed gangs on that square. The man, whose real role at the time remains unclear, was a guest at a conference held by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and a speaker at NATO events. . . .”
7.–Parubiy was one of the main organizers of the Orange Revolution, which brought Viktor Yuschenko to power and installed OUN/B derivative organizations in power in Ukraine, sort of a “pre-Maidan” Maidan.” . . . . Following his retirement from the party, this experienced protest activist became one of the main organizers of the 2004 ‘Orange Revolution.’ . . .”
8.–Andriy Parubiy was the first defense minister of the Ukraine interim government and a member of the OUN/B-redux Svoboda Party. His role in the events dovetails with the possible participation of fascist and Nazi snipers who were to participate in the Azov Battalion. “. . . . The Georgians’ accusations also implicate, at least indirectly, the ‘Commander of the Maidan,’ Andriy Parubiy. Parubiy comes from the Ukrainian fascist scene. In the early 1990s he was one of the founders of the extreme right-wing Social National Party of Ukraine. Since 1996, he was the leader of its militarist street fighting subsidiary ‘Patriot of Ukraine.’ Following his retirement from the party, this experienced protest activist became one of the main organizers of the 2004 ‘Orange Revolution.’ In 2013, he assumed the same function at the Maidan, where he was responsible for none other than security and the ‘self-defense units,’ which were often made up of heavily armed thugs. In the Italian TV documentary, it was reported that Parubiy was going in and out of Hotel Ukraina, from where numerous deadly shots were being fired. Parubiy, claims that the hotel from which these shots were being fired – which was firmly under the Maidan demonstrators’ control – had been taken over ‘by snipers who arrived from Russia and who were controlled by Russia.’ . . .”

We conclude with another example of just what the contemporary Ukrainian political establishment is manifesting. Ukraine’s official understanding of its own WWII history and the Holocaust had another manifestation of Orwellian historical revisionism. This time it was by Poroshenko reinforcing the Orwellian revision. ” . . . . As we reported back in October, Ukrainian media outlet Radio Svoboda — the Ukrainian arm of the US Government-funded arm of RFERL — posted a picture from the US Holocaust Museum. It is an image of Polish Jews being deported to a death camp. There was just one problem. Radio Svoboda claimed the picture was from 1949 of Ukrainians being deported to Siberia. In fact, so effective was Radio Svoboda’s forgery that President Poroshenko himself tweeted it claiming it showed Ukrainians being deported. . . . Today it emerged that a major Ukrainian media outlet has struck again. In a December 20th article about the horrors of the NKVD (Soviet forerunner of the KGB), media outlet “Ukrinform” also borrowed a picture from the US Holocaust Museum, this time of Ukrainian Auxiliary Policemen shooting a Jewish child and mother — and fraudulently claimed it was actually of the NKVD shooting people. The caption reads in translation: ‘Atrocities of the Chekhists: the execution of a mother and child by the NKVD’. . . .”

Program Highlights Include:

1.–Review of the possible role of Nazi hacker, Glenn Greenwald associate and Ukraine resident Andrew “Weev” Auerenheimer in the high-profile hacks: ” . . . . [Peter W.] Smith also reached out to ‘Guccifer 2.0’—an alias the U.S. intelligence community has linked to Russian state hackers—and was advised to seek the help of a white nationalist hacker who lives in Ukraine. . . . [Pax] Johnson said he also suggested that Smith get in touch with Andrew Auernheimer, a hacker who goes by the alias “Weev” and has collaborated with Johnson in the past. . . .” We note that Charles C. Johnson, an associate of Mike Cernovich, was involved with this maneuver.
2.–Review of Atlantic Council fellow Dmitri Alperovitch (co-founder and chief technology officer of Crowdstrike, the cyber-security firm that led the charge to attribute the high-profile hacks to Russia. Kurt Volker is also closely affiliated with the Atlantic Council. ” . . . . Dmitri Alperovitch is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. . . . The connection between [Crowdstrike co-founder and chief technology officer Dmitri] Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council has gone largely unremarked upon, but it is relevant given that the Atlantic Council—which is is funded in part by the US State Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk—has been among the loudest voices calling for a new Cold War with Russia. As I pointed out in the pages of The Nation in November, the Atlantic Council has spent the past several years producing some of the most virulent specimens of the new Cold War propaganda. . . . ”

Beginning our tour in Poland, we note alarming signs of that country descending into fascism, with anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim xenophobia on the ideological front burner of the ironically named Law and Justice Party: ” . . . . Tens of thousands of people — many of them young men with crew cuts, but some parents with children, too — flocked to the Polish capital to celebrate Independence Day in a march organized in part by two neo-fascist organizations. They waved white and red Polish flags, they brandished burning torches, and they wore “white power” symbols. They carried banners declaring, ‘Death to enemies of the homeland,’ and screamed, ‘Sieg Heil!’ and ‘Ku Klux Klan!’ . . . .”

The treatment accorded female counter-demonstrators exemplifies the nature of the rally: ” . . . . A dozen incredibly courageous women showed up to protest the march. After mixing with the marchers, they unraveled a long strip of cloth emblazoned with ‘Stop Fascism.’ They were immediately attacked. Their banner was ripped apart. Marchers pushed some of the women to the ground and kicked others. . . .”

At an institutional level, the Law and Justice Party is implementing an Orwellian mockery of its name: ” . . . Ever since the Law and Justice Party won both the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2015, Poland has been undergoing a disturbing political transformation. Law and Justice is an Orwellian name for a party that constantly violates the law, breaks constitutional provisions and is hellbent on subjecting the courts to its control. The party is dismantling the institutional framework of parliamentary democracy piece by piece in order to remove any restraints on the personal power of its leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. ‘Prezes,’ the Boss, people call him. . . .”

The xenophobia utilized by the Law and Justice Party is a common element in European and American fascist movements: ” . . . . Two years ago, the party bet that latching onto the refugee crisis in Europe would give it purchase on the votes necessary to win. Its calculation proved entirely correct. One of the first institutions the party hijacked was public television. Law and Justice has turned it into Fox News on steroids, paid for by the taxpayers. It feeds viewers nonstop propaganda about the mounting threat to Poland’s sovereignty from the European Union, specifically in the form of Muslim refugees. Those refugees present a threat to our way of life, the government and the press insist. They will assault our women, they say, and they are carrying infectious diseases to boot. A year ago, a quarter of Poles opposed accepting anyone fleeing the ravages of war in the Middle East; after months of relentless propaganda, 75 percent are now opposed. This year the country has let in only 1,474 asylum seekers, nearly all of them from Russia or Ukraine. . . .”

In Italy, CasaPound recapitulates Italy’s fascist past, in resonance with anti-immigrant xenophobia exhibited by other neo-fascist parties: ” . . . . But CasaPound is winning seats in a handful of towns, and some of its core beliefs — a fondness for Russia and sharp opposition to the European Union, globalization and immigration, which it believes sully the national identity and economy — are increasingly spreading throughout Italy. In Sicily, the new headquarters of Brothers of Italy, a descendant of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement, had the phrase ‘Italians first’ written on the wall during its recent inauguration. Anti-immigration sentiment has grown so popular that the once-secessionist Northern League has dropped the word ‘Northern’ from its name as it looks for inroads to the south. . . .”

Much of our tour is in Ukraine, where the OUN/B fascists are rewriting history.

Key elements of this Orwellian re-write include:

1.-The Institute of National Memory, headed by Volodomyr Viatrovych, is standing World War II history on its head. internationalists. . . .”
2.-Viatrovych and his Institute are marketing a “pet Jew” UPA soldier to prove the open-minded, politically correctness of the UPA and the OUN/B.
3.-Wholesale support for Viatrovych’s Orwellian re-write of Ukrainian history has come from Poroshenko government: “. . . . The controversy centers on a telling of World War II history that amplifies Soviet crimes and glorifies Ukrainian nationalist fighters while dismissing the vital part they played in ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews from 1941 to 1945 after the Nazi invasion of the former Soviet Union. . . . And more pointedly, scholars now fear that they risk reprisal for not toeing the official line — or calling Viatrovych on his historical distortions. Under Viatrovych’s reign, the country could be headed for a new, and frightening, era of censorship. . . .”
4.-More about Viatrovych’s historical propaganda: “. . . . To that effect, Viatrovych has dismissed historical events not comporting with this narrative as ‘Soviet propaganda.’ [This is true of information presented by anyone that tells the truth about the OUN/B heirs now in power in Ukraine–they are dismissed as ‘Russian dupes’ or “tools of the Kremlin’ etc.–D.E.] In his 2006 book, The OUN’s Position Towards the Jews: Formulation of a position against the backdrop of a catastrophe, he attempted to exonerate the OUN from its collaboration in the Holocaust by ignoring the overwhelming mass of historical literature. . . .”
5. The Polish fascists described above have remained silent about Viatrovych’s academic coverup of the Ukrainian fascists’ extermination of ethnic Poles during World War “. . . . UPA supreme commander Dmytro Kliachkivs’kyi explicitly stated: ‘We should carry out a large-scale liquidation action against Polish elements. During the evacuation of the German Army, we should find an appropriate moment to liquidate the entire male population between 16 and 60 years old.’ Given that over 70 percent of the leading UPA cadres possessed a background as Nazi collaborators, none of this is surprising. . . .”
6. Ukraine’s Ministry of Education is echoing and amplifying Viatrovych’s narrative: “. . . . Seventy historians signed an open letter to Poroshenko asking him to veto the draft law that bans criticism of the OUN-UPA. . . . After the open letter was published, the legislation’s sponsor, Yuri Shukhevych, reacted furiously. Shukhevych, the son of UPA leader Roman Shukhevych and a longtime far-right political activist himself, fired off a letter to Minister of Education Serhiy Kvit claiming, ‘Russian special services’ produced the letter and demanded that ‘patriotic’ historians rebuff it. Kvit, also a longtime far-right activist and author of an admiring biography one of the key theoreticians of Ukrainian ethnic nationalism, in turn ominously highlighted the signatories of Ukrainian historians on his copy of the letter. . . .”
7.-More about Minister of Education Kvit, and Viatrovych: “. . . . Last June, Kvit’s Ministry of Education issued a directive to teachers regarding the ‘necessity to accentuate the patriotism and morality of the activists of the liberation movement,’ including depicting the UPA as a ‘symbol of patriotism and sacrificial spirit in the struggle for an independent Ukraine’ and Bandera as an ‘outstanding representative’ of the Ukrainian people.’ More recently, Viatrovych’s Ukrainian Institute of National Memory proposed that the city of Kiev rename two streets after Bandera and the former supreme commander of both the UPA and the Nazi-supervised Schutzmannschaft Roman Shukhevych. . . .”
8.-In keeping with the re-writing of Ukraine’s wartime history, the city of Lvov [Lviv or Lemberg, when it was part of Poland] has established a festival in honor of Roman Shukhevych, the head of the Einsatzgruppe Nachtigall or Nightingale Battalion, on the anniversary of the beginning of a pogrom that he led.

More about this pogrom:

1, “The Ukrainian city of Lviv will hold a festival celebrating a Nazi collaborator on the anniversary of a major pogrom against the city’s Jews. . . . On June 30, 1941, Ukrainian troops, including militiamen loyal to Shukhevych’s, began a series of pogroms against Jews, which they perpetrated under the auspices of the German army, according to Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder and other scholars. They murdered approximately 6,000 Jews in those pogroms. . . .”
2.-The Einsatzgruppe Nachtigall was an SS extermination unit. “. . . . In 1959 [SS officer Theodor] Oberlaender was the center of a storm that finally forced his resignation in May 1960. He was blamed for the mass murder of thousands of Jews and Polish intellectuals who had been liquidated in July 1941 when a special SS task force under his command occupied the Polish city of Lemberg (Lvov). . . . As briefly mentioned in a previous chapter, Minister Oberlaender is accused of having been involved in the so-called “Lemberg massacre,” in which several thousand Poles and more than 5,000 Jews were slaughtered. Dr. Oberlaender does not deny a] that he was the commanding officer of a special SS task force, the Nightingale Battalion, made up of nationalist Ukrainians; and b] that this battalion was the first German unit to move into the Polish city of Lemberg on June 29, 1941, where it remained for six or seven days. . . .”

The official founding of the UPA (October 14)–the group whose troops comprised the Einsatzgruppe Nachtigall–is now a national holdiay Ukraine: ” . . . . Thousands of Ukrainian nationalists have marched through the capital, Kyiv, to mark the 75th anniversary of the creation of the controversial Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). March organizers said as many as 20,000 people participated in the October 14 march, which was supported by the right-wing Freedom, Right Sector, and National Corp political parties. . . . Journalists reported seeing some marchers giving Nazi salutes. Since 2015, the October 14 anniversary has been marked as the Defender of Ukraine Day public holiday. . . . .”

Program Highlights Include:

1.-We return to the subject of the Lithuanian Rifleman’s Union, who are engaging with maneuvers with similar organizations from Latvia and Lithuania.
2.-Reviewing information about the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union, we highlight its activities as part of the Nazi military effort in the Baltic states, including participation in administering Hitler’s “Final Solution.”
3.-Reminiscent of the Nazi “punisher battalions,” the Lithuanian Rifleman’s Union–a fascist militia–has been expanded to meet the so-called “Russian threat.” Like the OUN/B’s military wing–the UPA–the Lithuanian Rifleman’s Union continued the combat of World War II until the early 1950’s. Formed during the waning days of the Second World War, they jumped from the Third Reich to the Office of Policy Coordination, a CIA/State Department operational directorate. (This is covered in FTR #777, as well as AFA #1.)
4.-Review of inforation from FTR #779, noting that Svoboda was networking with Roberto Fiore’s Forza Nuova. Svoboda has threatened Ukrainian Jews who protested the establishment of an official holiday in Ukraine honoring Ukrainian pogromist Simeon Petlyura, whose troops killed 50,000 Jews in Ukraine.

As the title indicates, this program examines manifestations of fascism around the world.

In Europe, we analyze:

1.-The recapitulation of Nazi and fascist elements in the current Bulgarian coalition government of Boyko Borisov. (Bulgaria was a Nazi ally in World War II.)
2.-The vitality of “regionalism”–a political/economic doctrine that advocates the secession of key prosperous regions from nation states.
3.-Analysis of regionalism as an application of globalist economic theory to Euorope.
4.-The history of regionalism’s advoacy by Third Reich veteran theoreticians.
5.-Edward Snowden and Julian Assange’s support for Catalan secession from Spain.
6.-The success of the AfD in German elections.
7.-AfD politician Alexander Gauland’s statement that Germans should be proud of what that country’s soldiers accomplished in World War II.
8.-The Austrian Freedom Party’s projected success in upcoming elections. The party was formed in 1956 by Third Reich veterans as a vehicle for re-introducing Austrian Nazis into the country’s political life.

In Latin America, we examine:

1.-The verdict that Argentine AMIA bombing investigator Alberto Nisman’s death was a murder, not a suicide.
2.-Review of the AMIA bombing investigation.
3.-The discovery of a cache of Nazi artifacts, including devices used for determining racial purity. Hitler apparently posed with some of the artificats.
4.-The role of Nisman’s widow as the judge investigating the Nazi artifact case.
5.-Operational links between American Nazi Christopher Cantwell and the Koch Brothers-funded Ludwig Von Mises Institute in Brazil.

In the United States, we detail:

1.-How Breitbart actively promoted Neo-Nazism, while downplaying what it was actually doing.
2.-How white supremacist and Nazi elements are successfully using YouTube to mainstream fascist and racist views.

In the Middle East, we highlight:

1.-Benjamin Netanyahu’s political connections with the Thyssen/Krupp firm, one of the lynchpins of the Bormann capital network.
2.-Yair Netanyahu’s attribution of his father’s political difficulties to sabotage by an international Jewish conspiracy.
3.-Ronald Regan’s 1981 citation of Ibn Khaldun as a key advocate for supply-side economics.
4.-Review of the Muslim Brotherhood’s embrace of the views of Ibn Khaldun.

Continuing and deepening analysis of the profound Ukrainian fascist connection to the “Russia-Gate” disinformation inundating the American political and journalistic landscapes, this program highlights circumstances surrounding the sniper shootings at the Maidan demonstrations.

Those sniper shootings were the key circumstance generating international outrage against the Yanukovich regime and precipitating the rise of the OUN/B Ukrainain fascist successor organizations. Recorded the day after former Yanukovuch adviser and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was indicted by [VERY] special prosecutor Robert Mueller, this program supplements discussion from FTR #981.

Distilling information concerning the sniper attacks, we review the possibility that Manafort might have played an advisory role in the sniper shootings, that the shootings might have been a provocation and examine the role of the Nazi Azov battalion and its proponents and component figures in connection with the Maidan shootings and the “Russia-Gate” propaganda.

We wonder if recent attacks in Ukraine might be elements of a “sanitization” operation, aimed at eliminating participants in the Maidan shootings (provocation?), while blaming the violence (of course) on Russia.

Major considerations in the Azov Battalion/Maidan sniper/Manafort imbroglio include:

1.-Alleged “Russian agent” Paul Manafort–identified in FTR #919 as a probable “advance man” for regimes targeted for destabilization–may well have been the person who recommended to his “client” Yanukovich to fire on the Maidan demonstrators. It was that gunfire that signalled the end of Yanukovich’s government. This reinforces Mr. Emory’s take on Manafort. ” . . . . The lawyer’s demands for explanation spring from the hacking earlier this year of the iPhone of Mr Manafort’s daughter, [since confirmed as genuine, at least in part–D.E.] Andrea, with around 300,000 messages published in the dark web. One of the texts sent to her sister Jessica said: ‘Don’t fool yourself. That money we have is blood money.’ It continued ‘You know he has killed people in Ukraine? Knowingly, as a tactic to outrage the world and get focus on Ukraine. Remember when there were all those deaths taking place. A while back. About a year ago. Revolts and what not. Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that, to send those people get them slaughtered.’ . . . .”
2.-Reinforcing the hypothesis that the Maidan shootings were a provocation is the disclosure by Ukraine’s chief prosecutor that the rifles allegedly used to fire on the Maidan demonstrators were recovered by an alleged Yanukovich operative and leader of the snipers who was one of the demonstrators on the Maidan! “ . . . Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko says that the man who helped the so-called “black hundred” of police task force Berkut, who had been shooting at protesters during the Revolution of Dignity, flee Kyiv and deliberately drowned their weapons to conceal evidence, was himself one of the participants of the Maidan protests. ‘With the help of military counterintelligence, we have found weapons of the ‘black hundred,’ including a sniper rifle, which the entire country saw on footage showing the shooting at the protesters from outside the October Palace,” he told the 112 Ukraine TV channel. . . . ‘We found it with a large number of automatic rifles on the bottom of one of Kiev’s lakes. They were cut and drowned in one batch by a single group, whose leader is one of the targets of our investigation. Unfortunately, this man who, according to our version, upon the orders of [former Interior Minister Vitaliy] Zakharchenko helped the ‘black hundred’ flee Kyiv, destroyed and drowned their weapons, he, himself, was with us on the Maidan,’ Lutsenko said. . . . ”
3.-The journalistic viewpoint on a Ukrainian hacker allegedly used by “Russian hackers” against the U.S. comes from Anton Gerashchenko, part of the same milieu as Pravy Sektor, Azov, etc. Gerashchenko is, in fact, an apologist for Azov, as discussed in FTR #’s 803, 804, 808, 818: ” . . . . Security experts were initially left scratching their heads when the Department of Homeland Security on Dec. 29 released technical evidence of Russian hacking that seemed to point not to Russia, but rather to Ukraine. . . A member of Ukraine’s Parliament with close ties to the security services, Anton Gerashchenko, said that the interaction was online or by phone and that the Ukrainian programmer had been paid to write customized malware without knowing its purpose, only later learning it was used in Russian hacking. . . . It is not clear whether the specific malware the programmer created was used to hack the D.N.C. servers. . . .”
4.-Exemplifying the Ukrainian fascists at the epicenter of “Russia-Gate” are a group of Ukrainian hackers, working in tandem with fascist politicians like the aforementioned Anton Gerashchenko. (This is discussed in FTR #981.) The hacker/Ukrainian fascist link spawned the “PropOrNot” list of “Russian/Kremlin/Putin” dupes in the U.S. media: This list was compiled by the Ukrainian intelligence service, interior ministry and–ahem–hackers: “. . . . One of the more frightening policies enacted by the current oligarch-nationalist regime in Kiev is an online blacklist [42] of journalists accused of collaborating with pro-Russian ‘terrorists.’ [43] The website, ‘Myrotvorets’ [43] or ‘Peacemaker’—was set up by Ukrainian hackers working with state intelligence and police, all of which tend to share the same ultranationalist ideologies as Parubiy and the newly-appointed neo-Nazi chief of the National Police. . . . The website is designed to frighten and muzzle journalists from reporting anything but the pro-nationalist party line, and it has the backing of government officials, spies and police—including the SBU (Ukraine’s successor to the KGB), the powerful Interior Minister Avakov and his notorious far-right deputy, Anton Geraschenko. Ukraine’s journalist blacklist website—operated by Ukrainian hackers working with state intelligence—led to a rash of death threats against the doxxed journalists, whose email addresses, phone numbers and other private information was posted anonymously to the website. . . .”
5.-Anton Geraschenko is also a primary associate and defender of the Azov Battalion and the Nazi Social National Assembly that helped spawn it and overlaps its operations: ” . . . . The Azov Bat­tal­ion was formed and armed by Ukraine’s inte­rior min­istry. A min­is­te­r­ial adviser, Anton Gerashchenko [who is networking with Ukrainian hackers looming large in the “Russia-Gate” investigation–D.E.], got angry when I asked him if the bat­tal­ion had any neo-Nazi links through the Social National Assembly. ‘The Social National Assem­bly is not a neo-Nazi organ­i­sa­tion,’ he said. ‘It is a party of Ukrain­ian patri­ots who are giv­ing their lives while the rich Euro­peans are only talk­ing about sup­port­ing Ukraine. When, may I ask, will Eng­lish peo­ple come here and help us fight ter­ror­ists sent by Russia’s Pres­i­dent [Vladimir] Putin, instead of lec­tur­ing us on our moral val­ues or people’s polit­i­cal affiliations?’ Mr Gerashchenko was adamant, how­ever, that there were no for­eign cit­i­zens fight­ing in the Azov Battalion. ‘There are for­eign jour­nal­ists, from Swe­den, Spain and Italy, who have come to report on the heroic achieve­ments of the fight­ers in their strug­gle against ter­ror­ism,’ he said. . . .”
6.-Mikael Skillt (whom we discussed in FTR #803), alleges that he spoke to two aparent members of the unit contained at two snipers, some of whom were present during the Maidan protests and appeared to have fired at Ukrainian police units. This reinforces the view that the violence that led to the ouster of Yanukovych was the outgrowth of a provocation. Note that the Azov’s number two man–Ihor Mosiychuk–was sentenced to prison for a planned bombing in January 2014. His supporters demonstrated on his behalf on the Maidan, helping to create the turmoil that led to Yanukovich’s overthrow. Might this have been part of the same gambit as the Maidan sniper attacks? ” . . . . He [Swedish army sniper Mikael Skillt] admits, however, to having spoken to at least two snipers, who, during the Maidan protests had shot at police from the Trade Union House in Kiev – at the time, the headquarters of the protestors. ‘Their mission was to take out Berkut’s snipers,’ explained Skillt.[7] The deadly shots from the Maidan, which in Western propaganda had been used to legitimize the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych, have never been investigated by the putsch regime, and Berlin has never applied pressure for an investigation. . . . [On] January 10, 2014, Mosiychuk and two other fascists had been found guilty and sentenced to several years in prison for a planned August 2011 bombing attack. On the evening of January 10, ultra-right-wingers staged demonstrations protesting the sentence. The demonstrations degenerated into violent confrontations with the police. These confrontations, in turn, were then used by Berlin, Brussels and Washington to accuse Yanukovych of excessive use of force on the ‘movement fighting for democracy.’ . . .”
7.-The assassination of a Chechyan sniper fighting in Ukraine suggests the possibility that the Maidan sniper dynamic may be in the process of being sanitized, after Mr. Manafort’s indictment, yesterday. Are the assassination of Ukrainian sniper Amina Okuyeva and the bombing attack on Ihor Mosiychuk linked? (Mosiychuk was Azov’s second in command, for whom Okuyeve worked as an advisor.) Was a previous alleged attempt on the live of Okuyeva and her husband by an assassin pretending to be a “foreign journalist” linked? Might the “foreign journalist” have been connected to the Azov Battalion? ” . . . . A Ukrainian veteran sniper was killed, and her husband, who allegedly tried to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin, was wounded in a shooting on Monday near Kyiv. . . . Amina Okuyeva and Adam Osmayev were riding in a car past a railroad crossing in the village of Hlevakha when their vehicle came under heavy fire from someone in the bushes on the side of the road. . . . Osmayev, who was also shot in the leg, has since blamed Russia for the attack and said that it was connected to a car-bombing last week that wounded Ukrainian lawmaker Ihor Mosiychuk . . . Okuyeva had once worked for Mosiychuk as an adviser, according to Reuters. . . . This wasn’t the first assassination attempt the couple had faced. On June 1, Osmayev and Okuyeva were in a car with a man, Artur Denisultanov-Kurmakayev, masquerading as a French journalist named Alex Werner. [Was this one of the “foreign journalists” Anton Gerashchenko claimed were coming to Ukraine?–D.E.] At one point, Denisultanov-Kurmakayev asked them to pull the car over so that he could give them a gift from his editors. ‘When he opened it I spotted a Glock pistol,’Okuyeva told RFERL after the June attack. ‘He immediately grabbed it and started shooting at Adam.’ . . . ”

Program and Written Description Highlights Include:

1.-Review of Ukraine’s lustration laws–the three-sided statute targeted corruption, enhanced “anti-Communism” and–most importantly–criminalized any critical commentary on the OUN/B and UPA’s collaboration with the Third Reich.
2.-The efforts by Ukrainian fascists of the Pravy Sektor milieu to oust Petro Poroshenko by reporting corruption to U.S. authorities.
3.-Review of the Ukrainian intelligence service’s collaboration with CIA on the Manafort investigation.
4.-The role of OUN/B devotee Valentyn Nalyvaichenko in governing the SBU (the Ukrainian intelligence service.)
5.-Review of the operational links between the Ukrainian UNO-UNSA (the latest iteration of the UPA) and anti-Russian Chechen Islamists.
6.-Review of Jaroslav Stetsko’s personal secretary–Roman Svarych–as spokesman for the Azov Battalion.

In FTR #967, we noted the Ukrainian fascist affiliation of Andrei Artemenko, a Ukrainian member of Parliament who worked with CIA and FBI-connected Trump business associate Felix Sater. Alleged by our media and government to have signified “Russian influence” on the Trump administration, this Sater/Artemenko gambit was actually an ANTI-Russian conspiracy.

In this program, we highlight the profound extent to which the “evidence” in the Russia-Gate “investigation” tracks back to the very same OUN/B successor organizations we have covered in so many of our previous programs:

1.-A story noting the probable Dnipropetrovsk origin of the missile technology apparently facilitating North Korea’s guided missile technology documented the political affiliation of Igor Kolomoisky [Kolomoiskoy], governor of the “Dnipro” district: ” . . . . So, among the Kolomoisky-backed militias was the Azov battalion whose members marched with Swastikas and other Nazi insignias. . . . . . . . In response to the reports of possible Ukrainian collusion in North Korea’s missile program, Oleksandr Turchynov, secretary of the Ukrainian national security and defense council, issued a bizarre denial suggesting that The New York Times and U.S. intelligence agencies were pawns of Russia. . . . Press reports about Turchynov’s statement left out two salient facts: that as the interim President following the February 2014 coup, Turchynov ordered Right Sektor militants to begin the bloody siege of rebel-held Sloviansk, a key escalation in the conflict, and that Turchynov was the one who appointed Kolomoisky to be the ruler of Dnipropetrovsk.”
2.-The journalistic viewpoint on a Ukrainian hacker allegedly used by “Russian hackers” against the U.S. comes from Anton Gerashchenko, part of the same milieu as Pravy Sektor, Azov, etc. Gerashchenko is, in fact, an apologist for Azov, as discussed in FTR #’s 803, 804, 808, 818: ” . . . . Security experts were initially left scratching their heads when the Department of Homeland Security on Dec. 29 released technical evidence of Russian hacking that seemed to point not to Russia, but rather to Ukraine. . . A member of Ukraine’s Parliament with close ties to the security services, Anton Gerashchenko, said that the interaction was online or by phone and that the Ukrainian programmer had been paid to write customized malware without knowing its purpose, only later learning it was used in Russian hacking. . . . It is not clear whether the specific malware the programmer created was used to hack the D.N.C. servers. . . .”
3.-Reading between the lines, an otherwise characteristically propagandized New York Times article encapsulated critically important information: “. . . . While still politically influenced, Ukrainian law enforcement is no longer a swamp of incompetence and corruption. It has been able to monitor Mr. Manafort’s former business associates and turn up evidence of Russian hacking in the 2016 United States election, in part owing to American support. . . .”
4.-Exemplifying the Ukrainian fascists at the epicenter of “Russia-Gate” are a group of Ukrainian hackers, working in tandem with fascist politicians like the aforementioned Anton Gerashchenko. The hacker/Ukrainian fascist link spawned the “PropOrNot” list of “Russian/Kremlin/Putin” dupes in the U.S. media: This list was compiled by the Ukrainian intelligence service, interior ministry and–ahem–hackers: “. . . . One of the more frightening policies enacted by the current oligarch-nationalist regime in Kiev is an online blacklist [42] of journalists accused of collaborating with pro-Russian ‘terrorists.’ [43] The website, ‘Myrotvorets’ [43] or ‘Peacemaker’—was set up by Ukrainian hackers working with state intelligence and police, all of which tend to share the same ultranationalist ideologies as Parubiy and the newly-appointed neo-Nazi chief of the National Police. . . . The website is designed to frighten and muzzle journalists from reporting anything but the pro-nationalist party line, and it has the backing of government officials, spies and police—including the SBU (Ukraine’s successor to the KGB), the powerful Interior Minister Avakov and his notorious far-right deputy, Anton Geraschenko. Ukraine’s journalist blacklist website—operated by Ukrainian hackers working with state intelligence—led to a rash of death threats against the doxxed journalists, whose email addresses, phone numbers and other private information was posted anonymously to the website.
5.-A Ukrainian activist named Alexandra Chalupa has been instrumental in distributing the “Russia did it” disinformation to Hillary Clinton and influencing the progress of the disinformation in the media. ” . . . . One of the key media sources [46] who blamed the DNC hacks on Russia, ramping up fears of crypto-Putinist infiltration, is a Ukrainian-American lobbyist working for the DNC. She is Alexandra Chalupa—described as the head of the Democratic National Committee’s opposition research on Russia and on Trump, and founder and president of the Ukrainian lobby group ‘US United With Ukraine Coalition’ [47], which lobbied hard to pass a 2014 bill increasing loans and military aid to Ukraine, imposing sanctions on Russians, and tightly aligning US and Ukraine geostrategic interests. . . . In one leaked DNC email [50] earlier this year, Chalupa boasts to DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda that she brought Isikoff to a US-government sponsored Washington event featuring 68 Ukrainian journalists, where Chalupa was invited ‘to speak specifically about Paul Manafort.’ In turn, Isikoff named her as the key inside source [46] ‘proving’ that the Russians were behind the hacks, and that Trump’s campaign was under the spell of Kremlin spies and sorcerers. . . .”
6.-Alleged “Russian agent” Paul Manafort–identified in FTR #919 as a probable “advance man” for regimes targeted for destabilization–may well have been the person who recommended to his “client” Yanukovich to fire on the Maidan demonstrators. It was that gunfire that signalled the end of Yanukovich’s government. This reinforces Mr. Emory’s take on Manafort. ” . . . . The lawyer’s demands for explanation spring from the hacking earlier this year of the iPhone of Mr Manafort’s daughter, [since confirmed as genuine–D.E.] Andrea, with around 300,000 messages published in the dark web. One of the texts sent to her sister Jessica said: ‘Don’t fool yourself. That money we have is blood money.’ It continued ‘You know he has killed people in Ukraine? Knowingly, as a tactic to outrage the world and get focus on Ukraine. Remember when there were all those deaths taking place. A while back. About a year ago. Revolts and what not. Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that, to send those people get them slaughtered.’ . . . .”
7.-Reinforcing the hypothesis that the Maidan shootings were a provocation is the disclosure by Ukraine’s chief prosecutor that the rifles allegedly used to fire on the Maidan demonstrators were recovered by an alleged Yanukovich operative and leader of the snipers who was one of the demonstrators on the Maidan! “ . . . Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko says that the man who helped the so-called “black hundred” of police task force Berkut, who had been shooting at protesters during the Revolution of Dignity, flee Kyiv and deliberately drowned their weapons to conceal evidence, was himself one of the participants of the Maidan protests. ‘With the help of military counterintelligence, we have found weapons of the ‘black hundred,’ including a sniper rifle, which the entire country saw on footage showing the shooting at the protesters from outside the October Palace,” he told the 112 Ukraine TV channel. . . . ‘We found it with a large number of automatic rifles on the bottom of one of Kiev’s lakes. They were cut and drowned in one batch by a single group, whose leader is one of the targets of our investigation. Unfortunately, this man who, according to our version, upon the orders of [former Interior Minister Vitaliy] Zakharchenko helped the ‘black hundred’ flee Kyiv, destroyed and drowned their weapons, he, himself, was with us on the Maidan,’ Lutsenko said. . . . ”
8.-The sniper activity in the Maidan must be weighed against the fact that Nazi-linked elements from the Azov milieu were serving as snipers in Kiev at the time. Were they connected to the shootings of demonstrators?
9.-The supposed “evidence” of Russian hacking in the U.S. election comes from CrowdStrike, whose co-founder and chief technology officer–Dmitry Alperovitch–is deeply tied to the NATO/OUN/B milieu installed in power in Ukraine: ” . . . . Dmitri Alperovitch is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. The connection between Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council has gone largely unremarked upon, but it is relevant given that the Atlantic Council—which is is funded in part by the US State Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk—has been among the loudest voices calling for a new Cold War with Russia. As I pointed out in the pages of The Nation in November, the Atlantic Council has spent the past several years producing some of the most virulent specimens of the new Cold War propaganda. . . .”

Program Highlights Include:

1.-Information supplementing the discussion from FTR #967 concerning attempts by the OUN/B successor organizations to oust Poroshenko.
2.-Efforts by Yulia Tymoshenko to pass information about Poroshenko to U.S. authorities.
3.-The role of former Ukrainian intelligence chief, Pravy Sektor intimate Valentyn Nalyvaichenko in Tymoshenko’s efforts.
4.-The role of Nalyvaichenko in providing dirt on Poroshenko to Artemenko
5.-The role of Atlantic Council financier Viktor Pinchuk in advancing “peace plans” being attributed to “Russia/Putin/the Kremlin/dupes of same.”

With the Trump administration moving against gay rights and reproductive rights, and with the public attention largely focused on yet another mass murder in Las Vegas, we delve back into the archives for the benefit of newer and younger listeners.

On 2/28/1988, we recorded Miscellaneous Archive Show M13: Gay Rights, Reproductive Rights and the Third Reich, highlighting how the nascent, vigorous gay rights movement in Weimar Germany was a focal point for Nazi propaganda and political action.

Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld was the lynchpin of the strong gay liberation movement in Weimar Germany and, as a result, was a focal point of Nazi Party propaganda, fueled with the additional fodder of the fact that Hirschfeld was Jewish.

(We note, in passing, that the gay rights movement in Weimar Germany received considerable support from a segment of the country’s feminist community grouped around Dr. Helena Stoecker.)

Historically, German attitudes toward homosexuality were mixed, with some regions manifesting a relatively liberal attitude and enforcement posture and others, an extremely reactionary position in both respects. Paragraph 175 was the official German statute making sex between adults of the same gender illegal. Again, the enforcement of Paragraph 175 was highly selective from a regional standpoint.)

In a manner directly foreshadowing U.S. right-wing propaganda in recent decades, the Nazi Party denounced Hirschfeld and homophile sexual activity as a product of, and a contributor to, the moral decay of the Weimar Republic and democracy in general.

Beginning with review of the suppression of gay rights groups and advocates in the immediate aftermath of Hitler’s ascension, the program notes how the Nazi tactic of tarring their political opponents with the taint of “homosexuality” developed into a political/legal gambit of specifically targeting specific individuals within the Nazi party and German armed forces.

One of the victims of this dynamic was Ernst Roehm, head of the SA and one of Hitler’s earliest and most significant associates. A “doctrinaire” homosexual who felt that men who had sex with women were inferior to those who had sex with other men, Roehm’s removal from power removed a potential obstacle to Hitler’s command of the army.

Furthermore, the purge of Roehm and his SA on the premise of homosexuality institutionalized the device of outright murder as a defensible vehicle of the German state and ready option of Hitler’s political will.

It was the “Night of the Long Knives,” as the purge became known, that established murder as a defensible and ongoing tool of state.

The Nazi anti-gay and anti-pornography ideology was instrumental in the successful removal of key general staff officers who viewed with disfavor by Hitler.

General Werner Von Blomberg married a woman who posed for pictures some viewed as pornographic. This material was obtained by the Gestapo and used to leverage Von Blomberg’s resignation.

Another key general staff officer who was an opponent of Hitler and Goering was general Von Fritsch, who was framed for being “homosexual,” jailed and relieved of his general staff position.

The latter part of the program relates how both homosexuality and abortion were ideologically and propagandistically conceptualized by the Nazis as twin opponents of the successful breeding of suitable numbers of young German men to fight the country’s wars–a theme that U.S. right wingers have borrowed to argue against gay and abortion rights in this country.

Program Highlights Include:

1.-The SS implementation of the Lebensborn program to support out-of-wedlock children sired by SS officers.
2.-The portrayal of homsexuality as an “epidemic.”
3.-The similarity between Nazi [alleged] chronicling of the gay sexual liaisons of Haso Engel–a German gay man and the propaganda gambit of “Patient Zero.” An alleged “lone nut” Scandinavian flight attendant, Gaeton Dugas–“Patient Zero”–was the supposed origin of the AIDS epidemic. We have discussed AIDS as the application of genetic engineering to biological warfare in past programs.